


Saudade

by xuhei



Series: For When You Can't Sleep [5]
Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: F/M, Kinda sad lol, involving johnny's relationship maybe... :), sorry jaehyun I did you dirty, theres a hint in this story which I wont play on but if you notice it then noice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-20
Updated: 2018-10-20
Packaged: 2019-08-04 19:50:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16353140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xuhei/pseuds/xuhei
Summary: Who? You and Jaehyun.What? Rejection.When? An hour ago, he makes it.Where? The place where you and Jaehyun first kissed.Why?





	Saudade

**Author's Note:**

> jaehyun is the easiest person to write angst about :) ps I do ACTUALLy have some cutesy stuff planned for him one day (I say as Im writing a slow burn fic about him lol okay bye)

“It hurts. It hurts so much.”

Johnny nods, not knowingly in any way whatsoever, but he nods to remain empathetic. He is in no way helpful to the situation, the only reason he’s not bolted a mile in the other direction is because he has ties to his friend. Friends. It’s more than only one. 

He’s awkward. He’s unsure. Most of all, he’s inexperienced. He never thought a situation like this would come. 

“I don’t know what to do,” Jaehyun says softly, his cheeks wet and eyes red from where he’s been rubbing them. He looks up to Johnny through the mirror that’s opposite the pair, the inanimate object looking back with such a mocking tone it makes Johnny fear what’s going on in Jaehyun’s mind, so emotionless but so raw. “She’s my everything.”

Johnny isn’t used to nights like this. 

Actually, he is, kind of. 

He works in a bar where girls and guys alike come to drink away their problems. He’s heard stories from both parties of their exes and he’s heard tales of a relationship that once was. Johnny feels as though he’s heard it all over the years, from cheating all the way to loving someone too much. Johnny has heard everything. 

He’s an expert in relationships really. The reasonable man, one who looked from the outside like Church did when it came to how dangerous a dangerous act is in unlawful and dangerous act manslaughter, would say Johnny knows the who, what, when, where and why for everything. 

Who? You and Jaehyun. 

What? Rejection. 

When? An hour ago, he makes it. 

Where? The place where you and Jaehyun first kissed. 

Why? 

“She told me no,” Jaehyun states. He’s looking down to the ground, eyebrows pulled together lightly but enough for Johnny to notice. His hands are shaking a little. “She stared at me for forty seconds. She didn’t smile. She just said no.”

“Forty seconds?” Johnny questions. 

“I counted.”

Johnny hums. “You counted how long it took her to answer you.”

“Do you know how scary it was to ask a question like that?” Jaehyun looks up to Johnny again through the mirror. His skin is ghostly pale, Johnny knows he’s usually pale but this is different. Jaehyun isn’t Jaehyun right now. 

He’s a figure in place of Jaehyun. A representative of a man who once stood by Johnny as his best friend.

And Johnny still can’t answer why. 

“She just said she can’t,” Jaehyun tells him, “she said no. She can’t. She can’t do it. Because of…”

Jaehyun pauses. Johnny knows Jaehyun is staring him down but he ignores it. Jaehyun is vulnerable right now. Jaehyun isn’t here right now. 

Johnny is awkward because he never thought he’d be here. Not with Jaehyun crying because you rejected him. Not with doubt in his mind as to the real secrets in your relationship. 

Johnny remembers when he introduced you and Jaehyun. He was friends with you through a music thing he joined and Jaehyun through school. The two of you both said to him how you had parents who wanted you to find someone to date already and he had the brilliant idea of introducing you two to each other. 

It was a success, if that wasn’t already obvious. At first, anyway. 

Jaehyun had met Johnny after school and you were over at Johnny’s helping him with piano. Jaehyun came in looking like he’d been to hell and back because he had a basketball game and was sweaty and overall disgusting but Jaehyun didn’t really care because it was only Johnny there. Then when Jaehyun walked into Johnny’s room he practically froze at the door on seeing you. 

Johnny, even though he was only 15 at the time, had never seen Jung Jaehyun stop talking in the middle of a sentence and just stare. 

Jung Jaehyun didn’t know the definition of quiet at the time. It was weird, but Johnny couldn’t help but smirk because he knew he was a relationship expert even back then. 

You smiled and said hi, obviously confused to Jaehyun’s antics after hearing him complain since he walked in the door about the basketball game and now seeing him not able to say a word when he was in front of you. Jaehyun tried to say hi back but he stuttered and messed it up. 

Like a lot of things, Johnny realises. That was the first time Jaehyun messed up with you. 

The second time was when you tried to hint at Jaehyun you didn’t have a date to prom but Jaehyun was too busy staring at you to even recall what you said. It sounds bad but it was as though Jaehyun was in a trance around you. As crazy as that sounds. Eventually after you said to Johnny you wanted Jaehyun to take you to prom and Johnny relayed this message to Jaehyun he finally asked you, but it wasn’t really the same. 

Jaehyun was so self conscious around you that he’d avoid you at all costs sometimes. If his hair wasn’t done perfectly he would run when he saw you coming. If didn’t have spare deodorant with him he’d go straight home after basketball without seeing you or Johnny. He wanted you to only see him as perfection and that doesn’t work for relationships. It never does. Johnny knows. 

When it came to Jaehyun finally confessing to you, Johnny almost had to do it for him. Jaehyun tried to bail out on Johnny four times but Johnny turned him around and told him that he’d never get you if he didn’t just tell you what was on his mind. That was another thing he messed up, being honest. 

Jaehyun knows how to be honest with everyone but you. Jaehyun can tell a stranger 101 things he loves about you, but when it came to telling you he couldn’t get a thing out. He never knew why. No one ever knew why. Somethings it felt like Jaehyun was someone else around you, but the only thing that was desired was you. 

“Do you remember when we went on our first official date as a couple?” Jaehyun asks. His previous sentence is lost in translation as Johnny brings himself back from his memories to listen again. “We went to that Thai place near to school. I’ve been thinking about it all day.”

Johnny raises an eyebrow at Jaehyun’s hardly illusive sentence. “Why your first date?”

“Because I knew she didn’t see me as more than a friend when we went on it.”

Johnny remembers. He remembers how Jaehyun came back to Johnny’s after dropping you home and barely said two words. He remembers how Jaehyun told him that he could tell by the way you rubbed his upper arm, how you avoided his eye contact, that there wasn’t a mutual feeling between the two of you. 

Jaehyun, being Jaehyun, tried to act like he didn’t notice. He did, of course he did, try not to notice that he cared so much more about you than you did about him. It didn’t even seem to phase him after a while that he was lying about the feelings you felt completely. 

Even Johnny started to forget that you never had feelings for Jaehyun. He guesses that, if you didn’t have any interest, you wouldn’t have kissed Jaehyun or accepted him as your boyfriend. It was easier to reject Jaehyun then than dating him and then telling the world that you didn’t want to be with him. 

But you did kiss him back and you did accept him. You made it out like you did want to date Jaehyun and you did, eventually, come to love him like he loved you. 

“But after we went to that restaurant and I told her to tell me if she didn’t want to be with me, she just kissed me. She didn’t say no. It’s like she… she didn’t want to tell me an answer at all. Because she didn’t know one.”

Johnny knows Jaehyun made a mistake of taking no answer as a good thing. He’s sure that somewhere along the line, when Jaehyun asked you to be his girlfriend, you didn’t actually reply and Jaehyun took that as yes and you didn’t know how to change that. It sounds like something Jaehyun would do, but Jaehyun isn’t himself around you, so that doesn’t make much sense. 

“She never said yes or no. She never ever said a thing. Not until today.”

Johnny recalls when your trio’s friend named Doyoung got married last year. He rushed into it and Johnny is sure it had wedding bells ringing in Jaehyun’s head ever since. Jaehyun, before meeting you, would have laughed at Doyoung for crying at the sight of his bride walking down the aisle. Jaehyun turned to Johnny and said that he wanted you to be his wife so badly. You smiled and didn’t spare a glance at Jaehyun meanwhile. Johnny knew your attention was on anything but Jaehyun.

At the time, though, he thought it was because of the wedding. You wanted to see what she was wearing, you wanted to see every emotion in the couple you were so close to. The only reason you’d chosen not to be in the bridal party was because Johnny knew Jaehyun would be bawling when they said their vows and Johnny is awkward around crying people unless he’s serving their drinks. 

So you stayed, you rubbed Jaehyun’s arm when he started crying (Johnny knew because Jaehyun cried during the Titanic) and you avoided eye contact with him until he turned you to look at him and made sure you could see how much he truly loved you. Johnny didn’t think too much of it. He thought you stayed because you cared about Jaehyun. 

Even in some strange way, Johnny still thinks you care about Jaehyun. He’s heard stories of people who aren’t in love. A girl who was having far too many glasses of Bells one night told him about her ex-boyfriend who never loved her. He said she didn’t know, that the only reason he was with her was to get money from her. He made her feel so loved she couldn’t even tell and… Jaehyun’s never had that with you. 

You didn’t try to act like you were so, so in love with Jaehyun that it would kill you to break up with him. You would go to doctors appointments with him and call the customer service line for him, you’d hold his hand during scary movies, and you’d more than once been the big spoon when he was upset. Jaehyun was a bucket of emotions, despite his macho-persona and hard stare. All it took to set Jaehyun off was someone not texting him back within a few minutes. 

Johnny knew you felt something for Jaehyun. It was impossible for you not to. You can’t basically live with someone for almost two years and not even care in the slightest. Maybe Jaehyun messed up by not realising the lack of love between you when you didn’t mention his advances to move in together again. When you acted like Jaehyun suggesting you two even do something so tiny as putting him on your car insurance was the biggest deal in the world, Johnny should have picked up on it. 

“She just said…” Jaehyun stops again. His body is barely holding itself up. Johnny knows he’s in pain. He wants to drink but Jaehyun stopped drinking so he could save up money to buy things for you. To buy one thing for you, really. “She said no. She said she didn’t want to.”

Jaehyun messed up asking you the one question he’d wanted to since that wedding. Not because of what he said, the way he said it either. There was one hurdle he’d never over come and that was you. 

“She doesn’t want to get married,” Jaehyun states. 

His emotion is failing him, his thoughts too. Johnny wonders if you’re okay, if there’s something he doesn’t know. But, after all, Johnny only ever sees the ones who end up at the bar. He never sees the one who is bad, he never hears their stories. He’s not really an expert at all, when you think of it. Sometimes it felt like Johnny knew nothing about relationships, because he only ever heard of the bad ones. Not the good ones. Never the ones who were going to make it. So how could he judge whether you and Jaehyun were meant to be, anyway?

It sometimes felt like Jaehyun forced it. The relationship, the love. Everything. Jaehyun closes his eyes as he lets a whimper fall from his lips. “She didn’t want to marry  _ me _ .”

And that was the thing Jaehyun messed up the entire time. 

**Author's Note:**

> I mentioned this in the jeno fic I just posted and I rlly hate self promoting but someone gotta do it. if you're interested in a tarot reading pls check out my offers! Don't do it if you can't afford it or anything but I did this online before and it got a lot of traction because it's great if you need some guidance. seriously don't worry if not!! https://www.fiverr.com/stellexerunt/read-your-future-with-tarot-cards


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